Opposition leader Tusk denies planning to raise retirement age if he wins power

Opposition leader Donald Tusk has pledged that his centrist Civic Platform (PO) party would not raise Poland’s retirement age if it wins elections this autumn. His comments come after one of his former advisors called for the age to be raised, as it was when PO was previously in power.

In an interview with Radio Zet on Tuesday, liberal economist Bogusław Grabowski – whom Tusk appointed to his economic council in 2010 when he was prime minister – also called for longer working hours, the privatisation of state-owned energy companies, and for Poland to adopt the euro.

“The opposition’s new economic guru, and the old solutions: abolish, privatise, extend working hours,” tweeted Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, a former banker who himself was also appointed by Tusk to his economic council in 2010, though later joined the now-ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Government spokesman Piotr Müller claimed that, if Tusk became head of the government, “he would stand in front of the prime minister’s chancellery with a sign saying ‘Poland for sale'”.

Tusk, however, distanced himself from Grabowski’s “private views”, saying they “have nothing to do with PO’s program”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP). He pledged that “we will not raise the retirement age after winning the elections”.

“PiS-linked media will try to convince you that a PO victory in the next election means raising the retirement age. No it doesn’t. We will not raise the retirement age after winning the elections,” he added.

When PO was in power previously, with Tusk as prime minister, it raised Poland’s retirement age to 67. However, after PiS entered government in 2015, it lowered it again to 65 for men and 60 for women.

Some experts argue that should Poland follow in the footsteps of other countries that have raised their retirement ages. Yesterday, France’s government announced plans to do so, increasing it from 62 to 64 by 2030.

Currently, Poland’s retirement age for women is the joint-lowest among EU countries while for men it matches the most common age of 65, according to data from the Finnish Centre for Pensions.

The 2021 national census confirmed that Poland’s population is shrinking and ageing, raising fears over the strain this will put on the pension system in the coming years and decades.

Projections by the European Commission for today’s 20- and 30-year-olds in Poland indicate that their pensions could in 2070 be as low as 25% of their final salary. In 2020, this rate had fallen to 42.4%, from around 50% five years earlier.

Main photo credit: M. Śmiarowski/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.